10 YEARS OF PEOPLE FIRST

On paper at The Gunter Group we are a consulting firm. We provide focused and results driven services to help our clients maximize their potential. 

Thoughtful action. Tangible results. Just like the website says. 

But since our inception in 2011, The Gunter Group has been (and will always be) a people centric organization. Because ultimately every decision we make comes back to people. How we develop people, how those people contribute to growing the firm, and how we collectively serve our clients in their most critical endeavors. 

With all that said, it should come as no surprise that a crucial component to our success formula over the past 10 years has been the caliber of individuals we select to join the TGG family. 

Our “people always” organizational philosophy is delivered through an interview and hiring process that is, by design, strategically unique.

As we engage with consulting candidates we are diligent and purposeful in our “listen-first” approach. The same “listen-first” approach that drives our client work also drives our interview and hiring process.  

It is with this mindset we commit to explore seven focused themes to understand a candidate’s unique potential to move our firm and our clients forward. 

  1. 1. Who Are They?: To build a people powered organization you must get to know the people. We seek to understand who the individual is. What is their story, their unique history? Equally important, what led them to The Gunter Group? Why us? Why now? 
  1. 2. What Have They Done?: What is their professional map? What are their experiences and skills? Do they have the core competencies to be successful within the dynamic nature of the work we do for our clients? We have long sought talent from non-traditional consulting backgrounds by recognizing the value of unique and diverse personal journeys.  
  1. 3. What Are Their Values?: How well do they embody our “Non-Negotiables?” Throughout the conversation can we hear and observe our Non-Negotiables from the individual? Do these characteristics not only drive the way they go about their work, but also what they are seeking in their next team. 
  1. 4. Is There A Pattern Of Success?: Are they over-achievers? Do they have a story where they delivered under challenging or doubtful circumstances? We will always value a pattern of success over pedigree. People who have demonstrated an ability to make those around them better in pursuit of a common goal will always be appealing candidates. 
  1. 5. Are They Team Players?: Have they shown the ability to bring people together to accomplish a goal? What was their role in the process and how do they talk about that experience? It is more than just working “well” with others, do they thrive with a team?
  1. 6. What Are They Looking For?: It is not just us buying into them, it is also them buying into us. Are we a great fit for them? What type of culture are they looking for? Can we support them in realizing their professional goals?
  1. 7. Can They Help Us Better Serve Our Clients?: Will they make us better with something they bring to the organization? If we have a team of consultants that all have the same approach and skills, then we are limiting our ability to help more clients solve more unique and challenging problems. We take pride in seeing talent in uncommon places to build the best team…… not just the best collection of impressive resumes. 

Do these questions always provide the same level of insight? No. These questions have, however, served as a critical barometer throughout the last 10 years to ensure we are bringing in the best people to thrive in our culture and exceed our clients’ expectations. 

We are often asked if this philosophy is time consuming. The simple answer is… yes. Yes it is. It takes time to explore each of these questions in depth with a candidate. But the time spent is an investment. It’s an investment in growing our firm, building relationships and our team capabilities, and enhancing our culture the right way. Not just the expedient way.  

Since our early days as a firm this investment has been a conscious choice by our TGG team, and it will continue to be in the years to come. With our “people first” mindset, we wouldn’t have it any other way.  

More about Matt Bader:
Matt’s passion and leadership purpose is all about helping teams reach their highest potential. He loves building and leading high-performing teams and seeing what can be accomplished when strong values, sound strategy, and a relentless commitment to execution collide. He is a trusted advisor who thrives on building lasting partnerships and driving high-quality solutions for clients. With more than 13 years of strategy, program leadership, and organizational transformation experience in a wide variety of challenging and ambiguous environments. Matt has advised clients in the retail, education, finance, and professional services industries and served as a leader in the military and nonprofit sectors. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a B.S. in Business Management and is a Certified Scrum Master, a Certified SAFe 5 Agilist, and has certifications in program management, LEAN, and contract management. Outside of being a loving husband and father, Matt enjoys the intersection of all things hockey, heavy metal, fitness, and beer.

WHAT IS AGILE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE?
(AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE)

In light of the work and results we have delivered to our clients over the past year, today we are introducing a new blog series focused on the impact of successful and strategic Enterprise Architecture.

Being successful in the current business landscape demands agility, a deep focus on customer value, and the ability to build and deliver adaptive strategies. 

If you haven’t considered the way these trends are affecting enterprise architecture (EA), you’re already behind. 

In this article, we’ll explore a new paradigm: agile enterprise architecture. But before we explain the value of this approach, it’s critical to get on the same page about a few core concepts. 

What is enterprise architecture?

Essentially, enterprise architecture is the practice of understanding and documenting components of an enterprise — and the relationships between these components — in order to improve strategic planning and decision making. 

The practice of enterprise architecture encompasses discovery (what does the enterprise have now and what will they need in the future?), design (what’s the best way for the enterprise to achieve its goals?), implementation (how do we put this plan into action?), and documentation (how do we synthesize this information in a useful way?). 

Enterprise architecture is usually focused on information technology and the relationship between IT and business goals. One major goal of EA is to reduce technology debt, a term used to describe the ongoing costs associated with hastily chosen IT solutions (as opposed to those considered in the context of a long-term plan). 

What is agile?

The agile methodology is an approach to the development of products or systems that emphasizes adaptation, evolution, and flexibility. 

The first use of the agile methodology was in software development. However, the spirit of agile — as described in The Agile Manifesto — can be applied to many different practice areas, including enterprise architecture. Frameworks like SAFe® provide guidance for applying these principles to different parts of the business. 

To boil it down to one key element, an agile approach values responding to change over following a plan, delivering incremental value throughout the entire improvement process. In other words, it is an iterative, ride-along approach rather than a prescriptive, point-in-time approach. Value is created along the journey, instead of being solely located at some distant destination. 

The trouble with traditional enterprise architecture

What does EA look like in reality?

Most often, enterprise architecture is the responsibility of one individual or a small team within an organization, or an additional role added to the many on an already overburdened leader. They conduct point-in-time exercises and apply EA “best practices,” which are typically academic in nature rather than drawn from contextualized real-world experience. 

The outcome of these exercises is usually a monolithic document that’s difficult to apply to day-to-day decision making. This document purports to “solve” the enterprise’s technology problems, but too often ignores the fact that every solution has a lifecycle, and that the usefulness of solutions changes over time. 

Because traditional enterprise architecture plans don’t flex and adapt, the technology solutions proposed by the EA team tend to become disconnected from the strategic pulse of the business. These legacy approaches structurally ignore the fact that what you know now is almost invariably going to be significantly different than what you’ll know later on. 

As a result, despite being expected to own the long-term technology strategy for the enterprise, EA teams often slide down the slippery slope towards being perennial meeting floaters, sitting on the sidelines of decisions rather than contributing real value.

What is agile enterprise architecture?

Agile enterprise architecture is a new approach to EA developed by The Gunter Group. Agile EA applies the principles of the agile methodology to enterprise architecture in order to improve business outcomes.

Agile EA focuses on iteration and continuous improvement. In this approach, the job of an enterprise architect is not just to deliver a roadmap — it’s to ride along with the roadmap, continuously closing the gap between the plan and reality as it unfolds. 

In addition, a major goal of agile EA is to create a set of architectural patterns that help define business problems and orchestrate their solutions. Agile EA decenters specific technology recommendations in favor of methods and frameworks for finding the right solution in any situation. 

To put it another way, an agile enterprise architect understands that “owning” the long-term technology plan for an organization is not a sustainable responsibility. Instead, agile EA focuses on enabling internal teams to generate their own solutions to complex problems in alignment with broader strategic goals. 

Agile EA dispenses with outdated and ineffective elements of traditional enterprise architecture practices. Whereas traditional EA is academic, agile EA is pragmatic. Whereas traditional EA is prescriptive, agile EA is adaptive. Whereas traditional EA often becomes decoupled from business strategy, agile EA is solely focused on the ways technology enables business outcomes. 

Ultimately, successfully practicing agile enterprise architecture ensures the organization has the technology runway it needs to achieve its strategic goals. 

Enterprise architecture as a service (EAaaS)

One manifestation of agile enterprise architecture is enterprise architecture as a service (EAaaS). As opposed to project-based consultants who are rarely around long enough to see the execution of their proposed roadmaps, EAaaS provides ongoing support in a scalable subscription format. 

EAaaS can augment or transform in-house EA teams. There are several advantages to this approach, including:

Through enterprise architecture as a service, The Gunter Group has the ability to transform an ineffective, impractical enterprise architecture function into an agile driver of positive change. 

A new era in enterprise architecture

We believe that agile enterprise architecture — which is best realized through EAaaS — represents a dramatic improvement over the status quo. 

More than that, however, we view the shift to this approach as a necessary component of a successful enterprise. 

The old models and best practices of enterprise architecture were developed in a different era. They were not built to handle the strain of the rapid growth and change made necessary by the pace of and competition in the modern landscape.

However, by treating your EA capability as a strategic enabler rather than a tactical function, you will unlock business agility, customer value, and long-term success. 

Agility is the hallmark of today’s most successful businesses — and you simply cannot have an agile enterprise without agile enterprise architecture. 

More about Matt Jamison:
Matt is an experienced solutions architect with a results-oriented understanding of the intersection between reality and architectural theory. He has the ability to plan, develop, and implement large-scale projects while maintaining impeccable attention to detail. With 20 years of functional information technology experience, Matt has end-to-end IT knowledge from layer 1 networking to application API interaction. An expert in mapping technology solutions to business needs, Matt is also able to conform to required regulations while maintaining IT best practices. Matt’s experience spans multiple industries, including healthcare, telecommunications, and security and software. He is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect. Outside of work, Matt enjoys the outdoors and all things bike-related.

INC. MAGAZINE NAMES TGG BEST WORKPLACE FOR 2021

We are thrilled to share that The Gunter Group has been named to Inc. Magazine’s highly competitive list of Best Workplaces for 2021. The Gunter Group was also recognized on Inc.’s selective Best Workplaces Editors’ List which is defined as a “showcase of companies that are not only the best workplace but are taking it a step further, pushing the boundaries and building a workplace of the future.”

Receiving recognition from a nationally respected publication is something that makes our team extremely proud and for which we are truly grateful.

When asked about the significance of the Inc. award, TGG Principal Consultant Angela Tekulve commented: 

“Every single day I work with my colleagues, I am reminded how lucky I am to be part of this amazing organization. I am proud to be part of a team that has been there for each other, our clients and our community in ways we could have never predicted a year ago. Being awarded one of Inc.’s Best Workplaces in 2021 is exciting, humbling and a validation that The Gunter Group is focused on the things that matter.”

When announcing TGG’s award, Scott Omelianuk, Editor-in-Chief of Inc. magazine stated:

“This is no small feat, as this year’s field of entries was the most competitive we’ve ever seen. In 2021, thousands of companies applied to be recognized as one of the best workplaces in America. From the many remarkable companies vying for the award, only a fraction are being honored as Inc.’s 2021 Best Workplaces. Clearly, The Gunter Group has gone through extraordinary lengths to attract, develop, and maintain its workforce.”

The 2021 Inc. Top Workplaces list was publicly revealed online on May 12th, 2021 and will be published in the May/June print edition of the magazine. Over 3,000 nominations are received annually from across the United States and employee surveys are conducted and reviewed by Quantum Workplace. According to Quantum Workplace, the survey program measures a wide range of research-validated workplace factors that impact employee engagement and satisfaction. 

To learn more about the 2021 Inc. Best Workplaces list and see the complete rankings visit: https://www.inc.com/best-workplaces/2021/ 

MIKE & ASHLEIGH GUNTER:
LOOKING BACK & LOOKING AHEAD

We are really excited to be celebrating The Gunter Group’s 10 year anniversary! It has been an incredible journey these past 10 years, and we have so much for which to be thankful and proud.

Mike founded the company in 2011 with the intention of building a firm that could do meaningful work for clients, locally in Portland (to start), and that would serve our community. He also wanted to create a learning culture in which people of different experience levels and backgrounds could chart their own course and thrive, and do that in a super collaborative environment where the team not only valued working together, but also enjoyed each other’s company as part of the deal.

We are pretty proud to say we feel like that’s the environment that has been created at TGG over the last 10 years! Not only in Portland, but in our other markets in the Pacific Northwest and Western U.S.

We are fortunate to have not only worked with a lot of different clients and client companies, but to have also made many friends along the way. We feel a deep level of gratitude to all of our clients who, in the beginning especially, were willing to take a risk on a scrappy start up consulting firm trying to establish itself. Thank you!

We are also so proud of our team. It is meaningful and significant to us to have team members that have been with us since the beginning; when we could all fit around a lunch room table. Those team members have been so critical to the success of the firm, and to attracting more and more highly skilled and experienced people to the firm. Our company is our team, and our culture is what drives us.  

The culture that has been built at TGG is what led to our Non-Negotiables.  These 6 core values – Collaborative, Integrity, Intellectual Curiosity, Thrives in Ambiguity, Emotional Intelligence, Grounded Confidence – emerged organically a few years ago from discussing how we were already operating as a team. They represent our North Star as a firm, and govern how we work together as a team as well as with our clients and communities.

We look at things like this: we get to be surrounded by 50 something people that we respect professionally and enjoy personally. We are so fortunate!  The desire to maintain our culture is what drives our decisions around growth and the future.

We are so excited about what the future brings for TGG in the next 10 years and beyond, and we want to thank everyone who has been with us on this journey so far. Here’s to the next 10 years!

CELEBRATING 10 YEARS
OF CLIENT SERVICE

The Gunter Group is kicking off our 10 Year Anniversary celebration, and will commemorate a decade of serving clients throughout the summer of 2021. As part of the celebration we will share videos, and historical photos and moments, as well as content that highlights the meaningful work and insights for which we have become known over the past 10 years.  

Since our inception, The Gunter Group has taken great pride in providing consulting services to a broad range of organizations spanning Fortune 100 companies to locally-based businesses. We look forward to commemorating the past decade of relationships and service with our clients and consultants.

Founded in 2011, in Portland, OR, The Gunter Group features an experienced team of consultants serving clients across a variety of industries in the Pacific Northwest and Western regions. The Gunter Group currently employs a team of 55 consultants with office hubs in Portland, OR and Reno, NV. The firm has been named one of the “best companies to work for” in Oregon by Oregon Business Magazine for seven consecutive years and named one of the “best small firms to work for” by Consulting Magazine two years in a row. 

THREE KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE IMPLEMENTATION

Over the last year we have supported clients spanning a variety of industries. Some of our most impactful client engagements have been in the area of Enterprise Architecture.  

As a way to further support our clients, we hosted a special Idea Exchange focused solely on the process of transforming Enterprise Architecture and increasing value to organizations with a more agile approach.

In that Idea Exchange we discussed three keys to improving Enterprise Architecture:

1. The quality of Enterprise Architecture should be determined by the outcome it enables.

Successful outcomes result from leadership teams and stakeholders clearly aligning upfront on the problem or opportunity. Identifying the desired outcome can be supported through an upfront planning process which asks questions such as:

2. Evolving roadmaps = useful roadmaps.

An agile enterprise architect can leverage the “perfect” roadmap as inspiration to identify a good solution which enables short-term benefits and sets the business up to realize the perfect solution.

For example, a five-year roadmap that started two years ago is not valid anymore and COVID-19 is a dramatic example as to why. 

Additionally, new technology and capabilities that can help your business operate more effectively will come to market, which were not part of your original roadmap. For this reason, it is important to regularly review and update roadmaps incrementally.

3. Changing direction is an essential activity.

Agile methodology is not only about making it okay to change direction, it is about encouraging and supporting this behavior. Identify your “North Star” but recognize over time the path to your “North Star” will change. 

A critical part of the agile mindset in Enterprise Architecture is that it can be preferable to have assumptions, even if some of the assumptions prove to be wrong as progress and developments are made.

Institutional acceptance of this creates the healthiest, most productive, most agile Enterprise Architecture process. The team should be inspired and supported to change direction when it makes sense and explore preto-typing and interim testing as part of their evolving problem solving processes.  

In closing we have been inspired and motivated by the proliferation and maturation of agile practices in recent years. Unfortunately, Enterprise Architecture has lagged behind in its own progression and application. While some see this misalignment and move on, we see it as an opportunity to help organizations effectively transform their architectural activities and support clients in an effort to successfully drive innovation across their technology ecosystem.

FROM OUR PARTNERS: TGG PROUD TO ANNOUNCE OUR NEWEST PARTNER,
MATT BADER

We are proud to announce Matt Bader as the newest Partner in The Gunter Group.

Matt joined TGG in 2011 as a Consultant, and was the first full-time employee to join the company. Over the last ten years, Matt has developed into a clear leader in the company, delivering stellar client service, coaching and mentoring other TGGers, and driving growth in our Oregon market. Matt has had a significant impact on the growth trajectory and evolution of TGG, and his stamp on the company is unmistakable.  

We are excited and proud to have Matt as an owner in TGG because he has been a partner to us in every other way for a long time. Matt embodies each of our company’s Non-Negotiables, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without him.

We can’t think of a better way to celebrate TGG’s 10 year anniversary, and we are excited to see where the next 10 years (and beyond!) takes us all!

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT:
MADDIE BARBERA

Today we take a moment and celebrate TGGer Maddie Barbera’s community support for her generous work assisting with COVID-19 vaccine outreach among vulnerable populations in our local communities. 

Prior to her career as a consultant, Maddie practiced as a pediatric nurse for 12 years and has been a licensed nurse for the past 17 years.   

Maddie often volunteers with the Red Cross of Oregon and in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she signed up to volunteer with Serve Oregon as part of the Medical Reserve Corp. 

Asked why she wanted to lend her experience to these organizations, Maddie said “I’ve always kept my nursing license active so I could be in a position to help if there were ever emergencies in the community. For me it’s a direct way to support medical professionals, local citizens, and community health needs in the state.”  

When Maddie received an email from Multnomah County inquiring about licensed medical officials willing to help administer COVID-19 vaccines to medically vulnerable populations and populations with socioeconomic barriers, she had no hesitation. Maddie saw an opportunity to lend her experience to the vaccine workforce and responded immediately.  

Maddie said, “the most rewarding aspect of the vaccine outreach and administration has been hearing patients’ stories of perseverance from the past year and their continued hope.”

“People have been so appreciative of the medical officials and teams. At times it’s even been an emotional experience for everyone involved because the community member is so grateful for the opportunity and the team’s outreach and personal service to them.”

We appreciate and applaud Maddie’s commitment to the community and for assisting the state’s most vulnerable populations.  

We are honored and proud to call her our teammate!  

TGG Q&A: MIKE & ASHLEIGH GUNTER ON RECENT OREGON BUSINESS AWARD

The Gunter Group was recently recognized as the #3 Best Company to Work For in Oregon in the medium-sized category. We visited with founders, Michael Gunter and Ashleigh Gunter to hear what makes this award special.

Why is the Oregon Business award so meaningful?

Mike: The Oregon Business award is especially meaningful because it’s a direct reflection on how our team feels about working together. It captures how the team thinks and ultimately this kind of award is the best news we can get as leaders.

TGG has been recognized on this list for seven consecutive years. How does that impact the everyday work of the team?

Ashleigh: I think it has a very strong impact on our work both in the short term and the long term. When we’re aligned culturally we provide exponentially better service to our clients and an exponentially better experience for our consultants.

Mike: Our intention has always been to take care of our team so that as individuals, people can thrive. Making the list multiple years helps confirm our efforts.

What went through your mind when you received news of the rankings?

Ashleigh: My very first thought was WOW this is fantastic! What makes this year particularly special is that in light of all the challenges, we’re continuing to support and value one another.